And then there came to Harboro the invitation out to the Quemado. The belle of the settlement, a Mexican girl famed for her goodness and beauty, was to be married to one of the Wayne brothers, ranchers on an immense scale. The older of the two brothers was a conventional fellow enough, with an American wife and a large family; but the younger brother was known far and wide as a good-natured, pleasure-pursuing man who counted every individual in Maverick County, Mexican and American alike, his friend. It seemed that he was planning to settle down now, and he had won the heart of a girl who seemed destined to make an admirable mate for one of his nature-loving type, though his brother had mildly opposed the idea of a Mexican girl as a member of the family.
The wedding was to be in the fashion of the bride’s race. It was to be an affair of some twenty-four hours’ duration, counting the dancing and feasting, and it was to take place in a sort of stockade which served the Quemado settlement in lieu of a town hall or a public building of any kind.
Invitations had been practically unlimited in number. There was to be accommodation for hundreds. Many musicians had been engaged, and there was to be a mountain of viands, a flood of beverages. It was to be the sort of affair—democratic and broadly hospitable—which any honest man might have enjoyed for an hour or so, at least; and it was in that category of events which drew sightseers from a considerable distance. Doubtless there would be casual guests from Spofford (the nearest railroad point on the Southern Pacific) and from Piedras Negras, as well as from Eagle Pass and the remote corners of Maverick County.
Harboro’s invitation had come to him through one of his fellow employees in the railroad offices—a Mexican who had spent four years in an American university, and who was universally respected for his urbane manner and kind heart. Valdez, his name was. He had heartily invited Harboro to go to the wedding with him as his guest; and when he saw traces of some sort of difficulty in Harboro’s manner, he suggested, with the ready simpatía of his race, that doubtless there was a Mrs. Harboro also, and that he hoped Mrs. Harboro, too, would honor him by accepting his invitation. He promised that the affair would be enjoyable; that it would afford an interesting study of a people whose social customs still included certain pleasures which dated back to the Cortez invasion, as well as many of the latest American diversions.
Harboro tactfully sought for more definite details; and when he gathered that the affair would be too immense to be at all formal—that there would be introductions only so far as separate groups of persons were concerned, and that guests would be expected to come and go with perfect freedom, he accepted the invitation gratefully. He had not forgotten the slight which the two towns had put upon him and Sylvia, and he was not willing to subject himself to snubs from people who had behaved badly. But he realized that it was necessary for Sylvia to see people, to get away from the house occasionally, to know other society than his own.
In truth, Harboro had been very carefully taking account of Sylvia’s needs. It seemed to him that she had not been really herself since that Sunday morning when he had had to place his life in jeopardy. In a way, she seemed to love him more passionately than ever before; but not so light-heartedly, so gladly. Some elfin quality in her nature was gone, and Harboro would gladly have brought it back again. She had listless moods; and sometimes as they sat together he surprised a strange look in her eyes. She seemed to be very far away from him; and he had on these occasions the dark thought that even the substance of her body was gone, too—that if he should touch her she would vanish in a cloud of dust, like that woman in Archibald Malmaison, after she had remained behind the secret panel, undiscovered, for a generation.
And so Harboro decided that he and Sylvia would go to the big affair at the Quemado.
CHAPTER XVIII
There was an atmosphere of happiness and bustle in the house when the night of the outing came. Harboro easily managed a half-holiday (it was a Saturday), and he had ample time to make careful selection of horses for Sylvia and himself at an Eagle Pass stable. He would have preferred a carriage, but Sylvia had assumed that they would ride, and she plainly preferred that mode of travel. She had been an excellent horsewoman in the old San Antonio days.
Old Antonia was drawn out of her almost trance-like introspection. The young señora was excited, as a child might have been, at the prospect of a long ride through the chaparral, and she must not be disappointed. She had fashioned a riding-habit and a very charming little jacket, and to these the old woman made an addition of her own—a wonderful rebozo. She brought it forth from among her own possessions and offered it affectionately.